Imitation and Emulation in Brazilian Colonial Literature

Abstract

This paper begins by revisiting, in greater detail, reflections presented in Saltarelli (2012), in order to investigate how mímesis constitutes a fundamental category governing Brazilian colonial literary production. This reflection starts from the consideration that there is a tension between its understanding, on the one hand, as imitation of nature or human actions and, on the other hand, as emulation of canonical authors and topics of rhetorical-poetic custom. From then on, it is proposed that the intersection between these two understandings generates a disturbance of the classical tópoi, without, however, our colonial literature having to be thought of in terms of the romantic category of “originality” and detached from the European customary matrix. Finally, we move on to the examination of specific cases, focusing on the analysis of works by António Dinis da Cruz e Silva and Basílio da Gama.